Polestar Of Subsidence
by SnapeJuice
Summary: As the world is destroyed, you have no choice but to follow along. Remus-Tonks. A psychedelic songfic in trying times.
1. Chapter 1

Polestar in Subsidence by SnapeJuice

My first psychedelic songfic. Actually, my first songfic, period. If you don't understand what's going on, blame Isa who wanted a Remus/Tonks fic. I think she was expecting a light-hearted fluff piece. Sorry to disappoint.

Lyrics interspersed are "Out of Reach" by the Get-Up Kids.

__

long way from home

See if you catch on.

Pink hair, a soft, rounded nose, accompanied by soft, rounded hips with a child nestled into the crook of it. 

A child flailing about wildly as said arm, creamy, soft, white, silken, cages it in place. 

__

****lost by an echo****

There is something drastically quaint about the picture: a woman holding her offspring. He sits back and watches them together, trying to figure out how he fits into the picture. He's been thinking too much anyway: about life, about love, about children, about stains in the carpet, about Quidditch scores and cups, about the lunar cycle, about the child's preoccupation with mint green tea, about his wife's ever-changing physical appearance, about it all.

He'd always thought too much, he contemplated silently, watching her watching him - the child watching both of them. 

He'd overanalyzed life; logic had beat him into submission years ago. His enslavement had been voluntarily ingrained in him, from his boyhood days when he was the good part of the bad crowd. When he was the saint amongst the sinners. When he was the devil's conscience. 

**__**

i'd never of known

It was too much of a good thing - this situation he was in, being married to her. It was too much of a good thing, knowing that she loved him so fully. It was too much a good thing - like being offered caviar after bingeing on wood chips.

She was too much of a good thing.

*****

See if you catch on.

A tall man with sandy hair, graying a bit from the outside in. 

__

i've got pictures to prove i was there

Always the same. Nothing ever changed with him. She was convinced he was born with an ancient dragon-skin briefcase firmly in hand, whether he needed it or not. 

__

but you don't care

There is something drastically unsettling about the picture: this man staring at her intently, so intently that if she moved too suddenly, spoke too loudly, he would run scurrying back to whatever minute corner of the house he had been inhabiting. He was so isolated, so very alone, and yet she loved him. She loved him enough to know her actual place in his world. She loved him enough to live with the fact that he was here because he loved the wriggling bundle of nerves settled in crook of her hip. 

She loved him enough to know that after it happened, after he'd lost it all, after he'd lost his one true soulmate, that he needed a center, a stable sort of core from which he could build his life once again. So she'd done it. 

__

here's me overseas, across a pond by the Dover peaks

And the child was born because without the child he would have been purposeless.

There would be other children later, she was sure. He was a man after all, and she would deny him nothing. The career she'd had before the child was the career she had after the child. 

She was in danger on a daily basis. And he knew it.

Even so, he was willing to have more children with her. 

He's ruined her in so many ways, but yet she would be willing to dance on the cliff for him again even though she was afraid of heights.

*****

See if you catch on.

They stand in a kitchen, surrounded by pots and pans, calendars and wands, baby food and silverware. All the amenities of home. It's comfortable and small and familiar. There's a child and two parents and dishes in the sink. They argue about who will wash them nightly, and ultimately, it's him because a clean house is a happy house. It's scary at times, but they do it. 

And it's a marriage.

The child gurgles and they both look at the combination of their genetics. Like their home, it's comfortable, small and familiar. She has a routine, and they have a routine. They are her's, and she is their's. And perhaps - _perhaps - _they belong to each other just a little bit.

**__**

i've smuggled myself into new nationalities

She likes the closeness and he likes to pretend to be close. He likes his isolation and she likes to pretend she has too much going on to care. 

And it's a marriage.

**__**

you think you'd be proud of me

Except…

__

there's room to believe, out of mind, out of sight, out of reach

Except, the birth of a child, the birth of a marriage is the destruction of a friendship. Except, she has lost so much and and been so disillusioned in the interim. Except, she never regretted that decision to share a bed with him for a moment while he was desperate (…and lost, so lost…) , and being with him - creating the child - created stability in his life. 

Except, she loses herself a little more everyday.

*****

__

*start over is no way to begin*

And…

have you caught on?


	2. Chapter 2

Written for Isa, as a Christmas present...

  
  
  


As inspiration, the Damien Rice song, "Tongue," has been used. A sequel to that other Remus/Tonks story I wrote, "Polestar of Subsidence." All fluffy, sort of.

  
  
  


And it started. She felt it again. The redness rising in her throat like a wave on cusp of a great hurricane, coming from nowhere all of a sudden - just in time to envelop her in a misty sweetness that tasted like strawberry jam on a scone the day after final examinations at the Auror Academy. 

She thought she could break away from him. Her bright pink hair as bright as the nose on her face in this winter weather, she sat back and thought quietly that she could be over him. He was ages older than her, he wanted nothing to do with her, she was convinced.

_"I love you," _she said to him, fatefully.

_"Silly, Nymphadora, you have no concept of what love entails," _he whispered back, his hands in his pockets, like a rabbit hiding amongst layers of tweed. 

And so it was.

****

And it started. He arrived home, and these four walls permeated with _her. _She was so full of life that he could barely stand to think about this rigor mortis life he had accustomed himself to. He Apparated into his home, saw the beige carpet with strawberry jam stains that just could not be removed and a stuffed Hippogriff in the corner belonging to the sprite half his, half hers. 

He thought he could break away from her. He had married her because of the child. He had destroyed their friendship because he had impregnated her, and it was all over. He thought that he could be over him. She was ages younger than her, she wanted nothing to do with him, he was convinced. But she had sniffed around, she had stayed, she had developed a genuine fondness for him. 

_"Silly Nymphadora, you have no concept of what love entails," _he had explained matter-of-factly. Secretly, though, he was scared, and tired, and frustrated, and... well... scared. 

Because he loved her as much as she said she loved him.

****

And it started.

The silence that he promoted after his soul's death just ceased to be after the child was old enough to talk. Sirius would have had a good time with her, he was fond of commenting to his wife, as the child grew from broccoli into a large oak tree. She was truly his child, developing ideas and intelligence, life and goodness, laughs and frowns, a little from her father - a lot from her mother. 

Sirius' name was not mentioned during their long silences, but she knew that secretly her husband pined for a return to that time before she was married to him. Back when he could sneak past a curtain and share a laugh or a frown, an idea or a goodness with that smirking, tow-headed boy who masqueraded as his best friend when they were in public. 

What she did not know was somewhere along the line, he started looking at his wife - the woman who shared his name - with the same exceptional trust and love as he had once seen Sirius.

He watched her as she changed her hair color, and her puffy red lips into purple thin ones, and her bright green eyes into fuschia tinted ones, and heard the giggles coming from his daughter. 

He watched her as she skulked around him when he wanted to isolate himself, when the only thing he wanted to do was sit in his den and grade papers. _"Are you done yet? Are you done yet? Are you done yet?"_ With the tenacity and never-ending energy of a twelve year old. _"Come on, Remus, come on, Remus, come on, Remus. We want to play, we want to play, we want to play." _

Her voice fades in whispers, repetitive whispers as it did that night when he was overcome with a physical yearning he couldn't ignore.

Constant. 

Enduring. 

He watched her as she slowly grew from someone invisible, enmeshed in his own torrid existence into someone that could pull him out of that dark place he had inhabited since _he _died. 

It was watching a scene out of one of those Muggle things... movies - where they called? A scene of his wife and his daughter. The operative concept being here that he was watching. Observing. Seeing. 

And it takes but a moment for all to come together. Ten years of friendship. Eight months of marriage. Nine months of pregnancy. One night of physical ecstasy. A lifetime with a woman and a girl. Eleven years before the girl went to Hogwarts. The numbers swirl about his head as they often do. He has always had a logical mind - Sirius was fond of telling him that if he weren't a werewolf, he sure would have made a fantastic mathematician.

And it started. He observes the scene in front of him. She looks up at him as she clutches the child's foot, playing keepaway as her nose changes, her hair changes, her mouth changes, her heart changes.

She extends her arms to her, a glint of happiness in her eyes. She _knows _this is the moment it changes.

He nods at her - an invitation into the moment. 

A sweet, beautiful truth he never knew he always wanted. A torturous sentence: the effects of too much Firewhiskey, too much loneliness and a scent too womanly, too intoxicating to be ignored resulting in the sweetness giggling just feet ahead of him. 

"Come, come be with us." 

And it starts.


End file.
